Check out this week's #AskTheCEO episode where Manuel and Daniel are discussing the issue of global tech talent shortage and how to overcome it, enabling creativity and fostering a sense of community.
Are you short on talents within your organization? Welcome to the new normal. As discussed previously on this podcast with different experts, the overall shortage of talent will increase even more drastically in the coming years. Let’s find out how you could solve this issue, establishing creative environments and a sense of community inside your company.
💡 QUESTIONS AND VIEWS HIGHLIGHTED IN THIS EPISODE:
♨ EXCERPTS YOU MIGHT WANT TO JUMP IN
00:00 Intro
01:59 How you define creativity
04:54 Opening up spaces for creativity
09:46 Maximise the potentials
11:40 The importance of belonging
13:47 Working without shortages
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Manuel Pistner
I think this is important, keeping people in the flow, focusing on doing the work creatively to find a solution. I think this is really.
Dani Guaper
Hello there and welcome to our weekly Ask the CEO Q and a session here at the Virtual Frontier today's topic of our Q and a session is detached and shortage and how to solve it. Are you short on talent within your organization? Welcome to the New Normal. As discussed previously on the podcast with different experts, the overall shortage of talent will increase even more drastically in the coming years. Let's find out how you could solve this issue, establishing creative environments and a sense of community inside your company.
Dani Guaper
See you and just a flash on the other side.
Dani Guaper
New session here at the Virtual Frontier and our Q and A session. 25 actually and our topic today. Nothing really new tech talent shortage and how to overcome it in the future. And the heavy part on this today is what I would like to discuss is the part of creativity and community inside your organization and how to enable it and what you can possibly do as a company owner or as a leader inside your team or organization. But maybe to start off, could you define for yourself what you find behind the term creativity?
Manuel Pistner
I think the ability to solve problems. I think it's the ability to not sure if it is the ability to understand and analyze problems. I think this is more analytical skill. But then if you have a well articulated problem and you are able to find different options for solutions, I would say this is creativity. Of course, art is also kind of creativity. But if you are talking in context of business, I think it's finding solutions for problems.
Dani Guaper
Why is it as a company that you can't really foster a creativity because this is something personal that comes out of each individual. But how can you lay the ground or make space that creativity can appear sometimes?
Manuel Pistner
Yes, there are different studies, right. That creativity comes up in moments when you are totally relaxed and calls mental creativity and you cannot be creative under stress right on the other side. I'm really curious about that because there are all sorts, some scenarios where people find the best solutions when they are like with the back against the wall. I mean, I experienced that in a scenario when I almost crashed my business or with a project and I had to find a solution, how to get the project done while we tried and tried and tried over four months to find a solution, and we didn't find bright solutions.
Manuel Pistner
And then I just had, like, four days left and I had to find a solution and that created immense stress. But it also created a great creativity inside of me. And I found a great solution that completely changed everything in my business. So I'm not sure. I think it's not a good idea to put people under stress every day, so they become more creative. I think this doesn't work. You allow people to be relaxed and find solutions. But sometimes I think establishing something like Creative Sprints, where you have to go to find a solution in the next week.
Manuel Pistner
You don't stress yourself out within the week, but you really try to find a solution in this week for a specific problem. I think this can also foster creativity. I think that is an interesting topic to explore and to test it because that's just my idea. I don't know.
Dani Guaper
You already picked into two of my following up questions like you explained how and when you feel creative interesting, and maybe we can dig into that how you can really as a company organization, open up spaces for creativity in a structured way. There's space for it because it happens often that people are in their hustle and they're running and they're doing business. There's not really a space for it. So do you have any ideas how to make really space for that inside your team?
Manuel Pistner
Yeah.
Manuel Pistner
I think one important part or fact is that people like what they do because when you like what you do, then it's fun for you doing it, and when it's fun for you doing it, you just do it longer because it's fun and then the odds increase that you find bright solutions for the problem. So I think this is something to choose people in a way that they say yes to a job where they really like what they are doing. And also, I think it is very important to clearly shape and craft and articulate the problem that you want people to find a solution for, because the more weight the problem is, the harder it is to find a creative solution.
Manuel Pistner
You might find a solution, but then it's not a fit to the problem as the problem is not really clear. So I think problem awareness is the key for being creative. It's the first thing you want to have so that people can become creative and find a solution for this problem. So this is important and then allow people to be in deep work mode in focus mode without being constantly distracted by people asking questions that are completely outside of this creativity zone, not related to the solution or the problem.
Manuel Pistner
Then putting immense stress on people with like you have to deliver in this time and deadlines deadlines, deadlines right? Without giving them room and time to pref. I think this is important, keeping people in the flow, focusing on doing the work creatively to find a solution. I think this is really key when you want your team performance to increase, allow them as much focus time as possible. And I think the same is relevant for creativity.
Dani Guaper
Speaking more on the technical side, what could be done, or how can you help and support people in your team or in your company first to set up their own tools of course aligned with the company goals and then help to help them to reach them on their own.
Manuel Pistner
Yeah. I think it's the same mechanism if you want to reach a goal and you have no idea how to achieve it and what is the first step? And it's a knowledge problem. So people should be able to ask, like an experienced mentor, a coach, an adviser, consultant, whatever to help them find the solution and create like, a roadmap towards bright solutions. I think this is a very important thing, as many people are trying hard to achieve something, but they don't know what exactly they want to achieve and they don't know where they are right now or how far they are away from achieving this goal.
Manuel Pistner
And very often they don't know what is the current problem that prevents them from achieving this goal. And I think this problem solution awareness is something that you can build into your culture by motivating other people, just asking questions, either questions to clarify the problem or either questions to clarify where a person starts right and doesn't find the next step towards the solution. I think these kind of conversations are very important for people to engage their brain around problems and around solutions. And you don't do this.
Manuel Pistner
If you always tell people what they should do, like the typical thing delegating by tasks, you should do this, do that, do that and they just say yes without questioning why that is important, and then they just deliver the task and it's done. This is just like stupid executions, just doing the work that you were given to. But this is nothing that helps people become more creative to find solutions for problems. And I think that's the typical coaching culture approach, which helps people to be more solution focused.
Dani Guaper
When we look on the group or team level side, what could I do as team lead or owner when it comes to the group consolation? So there are different types of personality and characters inside my team that is already existing. So how can I maximize the potential for creativity? Let's say when we speak about the consolation of these different groups or teams.
Manuel Pistner
I think diverse team set up. You need to have diverse personalities. So there is this disc model, right? You have people that have different attributes related to their personality. Typically it's four. It's like the green one who is very family oriented. Then it's the yellow one who is very extrovert person that is good with speaking at stages, et cetera. Then you have the blue person who's a very analytical person, really diving deep into numbers, facts and details, and then work with that. And then there is the red person.
Manuel Pistner
This is the person pushing towards bright solutions, the person that cannot accept that there is a problem which is typically like me. I'm poor in accepting there is a problem longer than a week, and I always try to solve it, solve it, solve it. And if you bring these people together, then the red person is pushing towards the solution, while the blue person will say, Stop for a minute. And let's first do an analysis of what is the current problem exactly. And which solution do we want to have?
Manuel Pistner
Exactly right. And then you can run further. But you are sure and certain that you run into the right direction while the green person will say, hey, guys. Okay. We now know the problem and we are pushing forward. But what about our people? We also need to ensure that we take people on the journey. So this is more the family or relationship focused person, right. And if you bring all these people, these different characters into a team, then you can be sure that you have covered all parts and from different angles.
Dani Guaper
Right. So let's assume we have consolidated this group or our team in a broader perspective. And this comes apparently more and more important, or at least visible community or the sense of belonging inside an organization or company becomes more and more important. Now people are working on remote and everyone is disputed in different places. So why should I, as a company owner, like, have an eye on that and pay attention to this circumstances, that it's really important to create this kind of community or belonging inside my company?
Manuel Pistner
I think because it's a human need that people want to feel connected to other people and to be a part of something that's bigger than themselves. And if you have people that just work, like, look, I just described the benefit of bringing diverse personalities into a team. And if you don't have a sense of belonging, then they just do work by themselves, and they don't have honest disagreements. Right? The right person pushing forward, ignoring everyone else, just moving forward towards the solution. If this person is only working him or herself alone without feeling a belonging to these other people, then they will just do their own work.
Manuel Pistner
And then there is no impact of, like, green people and blue people that somehow impact his or her action. If everyone just works on his or her own problems and there is no engagement in the group and you don't like to engage. If you don't like people and you don't like people, if you don't have a sense of belonging, right, then I think you don't. You just have individuals. You don't have a team. I think that's the main point. So you should care about that. If you want to have higher performance than the performance of individuals.
Dani Guaper
And then probably my last question from my side today, Manuel, is, what have you experienced since you work with global talents around the world, different cultural backgrounds, different personal background. What has this done to your organization, talking about creativity and, like, different influences? You get where I want to go.
Manuel Pistner
I don't get where you want to go, but I understand the question. Yeah. And I'm just wondering because it's a complete different thing. I mean, that's so fascinating, because I know that whenever I have a problem, I know that I find a person that understands the problem even better than I do. And then it's so much easier to find a solution with an experienced person that has much more experience in solving this kind of problems than I have. So you can really shorten the path from problem to solution by finding a person that helps you understand the problem better and then contribute with experience to the solution.
Manuel Pistner
Of course, that changed a lot because I'm able to solve problems much faster, which is my personality. As I said, I cannot accept problems to retain for longer than a week. So that gives me the ability to access global talent and solve problems faster and progress faster with people that know how to do it instead of me just assuming that I know it. But I never did it. So I don't have the experience that's a complete it's like if you want to build something and you have access to the right tools, right, then you have huge leverage.
Manuel Pistner
You don't need to take your fist and put a nail into the wall. You have a hammer, and it goes so much easier without pain. And that's the same if you have access to the right people at the right time with the skills that are required to solve your problem, and then it just goes smoothly. Easier, faster with less pain.
Dani Guaper
Awesome.
Dani Guaper
Any thoughts you would like to add one?
Manuel Pistner
Yeah, that's what I already elaborated on. If you want to solve a problem, you cannot spend enough time to really make it very clear what is the problem right? And don't just push forward to some solution. Better spend, like, 20% more of your time really trying to articulate the exact problem and articulating the exact goal that you want to follow. And then it's so much easier for people to identify if they have the right skills to solve this, or if you like me to hire someone else and then just go out and try it.
Manuel Pistner
When you know the problem you want to solve, then it's also easy to define a role like a character of a person with the experience and the skill this person needs to bring. That's typically a role description. And then you can find these people easily. Just if you have no idea what's your problem and you don't know which kind of person you need to solve the problem, then you won't find a person that can solve the problem as you don't know what it is right. There is a break in this chain, and there is more than enough talent out there.
Manuel Pistner
So I think developing your skill in being very analytical about the problem, and then which solution you want is the number one key to leverage global talent period.
Dani Guaper
I think we've got to close it and people will understand pretty well what it takes to get there. Manuel, thank you very much for your time, and I will say we see each other next week.
Manuel Pistner
Yeah.
Manuel Pistner
Thank you.
Dani Guaper
See you next week.
Manuel Pistner
Thank you.
Dani Guaper
Bye bye.
Dani Guaper
We hope you found this session helpful. Head back to our in-depth blog article on solving the cash talent shortage with workplace creativity. What did we miss in this conversation? How can we do better? Let us know in the comments and reviews we are happy to engage. And before you leave, hit the subscribe button. Give a thumbs up and share this session around with your friends and colleagues. Sign up for the Free Business Builder training on Flashhub.io and learn more about how to scale with your business at any time.
Dani Guaper
Work with global top tenants and make work better on the heart of the team here at the Virtual Frontier. Want to thank you for listening. So until the next episode, keep exploring new frontiers.